KITT4SME (platform-enabled KITs of arTificial intelligence FOR an easy uptake by SMEs) specifically targets European SMEs and mid-caps to provide them with scope-tailored and industry-ready hardware, software and organisational kits, delivered as modularly customisable digital platform, that seamlessly introduce artificial intelligence in their production systems.
Objectives
Uptake of the resulting packages and of the provided devices is strongly supported by the clear characterisation and market readiness of the individual components as well as by the platform grounding on the already established RAMP Marketplace. Leverage on the network of Digital Innovation Hubs, three of which are represented in the consortium, ensure that KITT4SME are widely distributed to a wide audience of companies in Europe. Seamless adoption of the customised kits is made possible by a Powered by FIWARE infrastructure that flawlessly combine Factory systems (such as MES and ERP), IoT sensors and wearable devices, robots, collaborative robots and other Factory data sources with functional modules capable to trigger data-driven value creation.
The KITT4SME concept comes into being from the acknowledge that companies are unprepared and inadequately exposed to extremely complex and widely diverse digital solutions in the field of artificial intelligence that are often much too broad in scope and relentless in dictating their own objectives instead of focusing on the issues a company really faces. Yet, whereas big companies have capitals and resources to research and build platforms internally, SMEs struggle in finding solutions that are fitting to their needs and, even when exposed to them, have to bear significant financial risks to embrace them while lacking the competences for a first-right selection. Lag in the digitisation race for them is not a system by-product it is a designed feature.
For this reason, KITT4SME supports and accompanies SMEs, the pulsating heart of the European economy to DIAGNOSE the undisclosed issues operating underneath the process surface that hinder the achievement of a desired system performances. Starting from the results of this formalisation process, companies access the platform configurator that allows them to COMPOSE modular and assembly-ready platform elements available on the marketplace to shape a AI-based digital kits tailored to their specific needs.
Once the customised digital platform is deployed and activated in the company, it immediately starts to SENSE the shop floor to detect in real-time the insurgence of quality-, performance- and human-affecting issues and of any consequent behaviour of the production system diverging from the designed one. With AI bringing to the surface hidden dependencies between observed parameters and undesired system effects, it is now possible to INTERVENE to restore the designed system behaviour by applying reconfigurations of single elements or entire lines aimed at solving or mitigating the issues being experienced.
Still a further loop is required to EVOLVE the platform, at usage level, by identifying and spreading best practices among recurrent users and newcomers, and, at skill level, by aligning workforce competence with the trends brought by artificial intelligence while promoting inclusion and equal treatment of gender and minority.
Known all this context, as main objectives, KITT4SME aims:
- To make available to SMEs ready-to-use customised digital packages for embracing artificial intelligence opportunities at affordable prices and proper scale.
- To seamlessly fuse artificial intelligence and human problem-solving expertise into a single digital brain with unprecedented shop floor orchestration capabilities
- To build a competence development centre that advances European workforce in line with digital skills trends and workers’ aspirations
- To extend the offer of local ecosystem so that players with different competencies can thrive while collaborating in the creation of customisable artificial intelligence kits
- To support standardisation in the fields of sovereign data economy and characterisation of workers’ skills and training experience
In order to achieve the KITT4SME ambitious objectives, the project activities are organized around a sound and structured methodology that is not only meant to develop the results, but also to pave the way for their market exploitation during and after the end of the project. Four non-sequential phases can be identified during the 42-month period covered by the project that logically tackles as many different challenges, each one addressing a key element for the project success.
Phase 1 – Stakeholders’ needs and platform specifications definition
Phase 2 – Standard-driven platform setup
Phase 3 – Large-scale piloting
Phase 4 – Effective AI uptake in SMEs by leveraging DIHs